Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

11 – Accessibility and Universal Design
Description
9 Plugins, applets & scripts
Pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other
programmatic objects are turned off or not
supported.
Assists: Vision, Cognitive, Motion, Hearing
10 “Last resort”
If, after best efforts, the material cannot be
made accessible, a link is provided to an alternative,
accessible page that has equivalent
information (or functionality), and is updated
as often as the inaccessible (original) page.
Assists: Vision, Cognitive, Motion, Hearing
Table 11.4. Accessibility evaluation chart—detailed
Rating details
5—Turning off plugin/script leads to fallback alternative
3—Turning off plugin/script loses functionality, but site is
still otherwise usable
1—Site cannot be used without plugin/script
5—Original pages adequate, or alternative pages provided
when necessary
3—Alternative page provided, but not equivalent
1—No alternative pages provided when needed, or alternative
pages provided when original pages could be made
accessible
Rating
(1–5) Notes
Case studies
From 2005–2006, the University of British Columbia was
involved in a BCcampus-funded project on web accessibility
in online learning. During the project, we created a
focus group of people with different disabilities. Based
on their comments, modifications and redesigns were
done on five courses that were piloted in summer 2006
as “accessible courses”. Where possible, we asked the
participants to use their own computers at home, which
were already adapted according to their usage and personal
preferences. When in the office, we tried to imitate
their home setting, giving them a choice of using Windows
or Mac OS and their preferred browser. We
wanted to avoid the additional barriers of working on a
new computer in an unknown environment, and for
participants to experience the same situation as our registered
students. Therefore, our introductions and instructions
were limited to what they would get from an
instructor in advance. We only limited their browsing
by asking them to focus on specific pages rather than
reading the whole course content. Focus group members
were interviewed individually before and after the
modifications. The first set of questions was about how
their disability affected their ability to navigate the
course material and what improvements would make
the material more accessible for them. Questions after
the modifications involved quality of the presentation,
usability of the interface and usefulness of the system.
In our consultations with the participants, we asked
them for their oral or written feedback and opinions on
their experience. The names in these cases have been
changed for privacy reasons.
CASE 1: SAMUEL
Description. Samuel is a hard-of-hearing English as a
Second Language (ESL) student from Korea. Online
courses had been recommended to him as a good choice
to remove the barrier of his impairment.
Issues. Samuel was surprised and disappointed with
the amount of text-based material in the courses that he
took. He compared them with the online courses in Korea,
which included a considerable amount of video
excerpts. Because English is not his native language,
Samuel struggles in traditional classroom classes. Despite
that, he would rather meet face-to-face, or use a
webcam to see emotions and gestures, than attempt to
pick them up from text alone.
Comment and recommendation. Making content
text-only does not necessarily make it more accessible. It
works well with a screen reader, but there is no benefit
for a hearing-impaired student. Instead of omitting all
the media, more attention should be devoted to providing
alternatives to pure audio, such as transcripts, or
captions for video components. See the example in Figure
11.7 where a video segment is accompanied by transcripts
and audio.
Webcam support is a common feature in instant messaging
software, and students are increasingly comfortable
with its use. While not every student can reasonably
be expected to own a webcam, video messaging supported
by text messaging would be of greater benefit to
Samuel than a standard text-based forum, allowing him not
only to see others’ facial expressions, but also to encounter
and practise spoken English at a functional level.
Education for a Digital World 177